After Prince Eugene’s death, the palace eventually passed into the hands of the Imperial family. In A.D. 1770, Joseph II hosted a grand supper at the Belvedere in honor of the marriage between his sister, Marie Antoinette, and Louis, Dauphin of France. 600 guests in masks, white dominoes, or hooded cloaks danced in the pavilion. 800 firemen and even a few dentists (!) were on hand for emergencies. The ball lasted until 7 in the morning.*

The Lower Belvedere is just as magnificent as the Upper Belvedere, and often hosts temporary exhibitions that are far more interesting than the permanent collection. In 2015, for example, the curators had amassed a ton of information on the Congress of Vienna. Jacques-Louis David’s gobsmacking portrait of Napoleon Crossing the Alps (the version owned by the Belvedere) took pride of place.

The Lower Belvedere is where surviving members of the French royal family were housed after they fled from the Revolution. Like today’s tourists, they would have wandered through the Golden Cabinet, the Hall of the Grotesques, and the Marble Gallery. It would be interesting to ask them what they thought of the ceiling fresco on the Marble Hall. That’s the one that shows Prince Eugene, in the nude, being elevated to the status of a god.

The Upper Belvedere houses the Belvedere Museum, where Austrian art mixes with grand state rooms. Like the Louvre, you’re liable to run into a mass of people standing around one famous painting – in this case, Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss.

To tell you true, I think you’ll find better art (and fewer people) in the Schloss Eggenberg in Graz. However, there is plenty to see beyond Klimt, including portraits by Thomas Lawrence & François Gérard and work by Klimt’s contemporary, Egon Schiele. If you’re tired of oils, don’t miss the contorted “character heads” carved by the 18th century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

The Karlskirche (“St. Charles Church”) could be called Fantasia on Imperial Majesty. In A.D. 1713, riding high on the retreat of the Turkish threat and his new position as Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI decided to build a church for his patron saint, the fanatically anti-Protestant St. Charles Borromeo. Plague had visited Vienna the year before, and Charles VI had vowed he would honor Borremeo, famed for helping plague victims in Italy, if the city made it out alive. Construction crews started work in A.D. 1716.

The final product, a Baroque wedding cake if ever you saw one, is the work of the great architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. It was built in direct view of the Hofburg and was used as the imperial patron parish church until the Empire disintegrated.

Hollywood Bonus: The famed actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr (then known as Hedwig Kiesler) was married in Karlskirche in A.D. 1933. She was 19. Her fascist husband, Friedrich Mandl, was 32. The marriage was not a happy one. A few years later, Hedy disguised herself as a maid and fled to Paris. The rest is Tinseltown history.

Although he never lived to see the Karlskirche finished, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach can’t have been too unhappy. For this is the man who created the Austrian National Library, the Schloss Klessheim, the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy, and the Collegiate Church in Salzburg. Born in Graz in A.D. 1656, Fischer von Erlach seemed to have left his mark on almost every piece of Austria, including gardens, mausoleums, and plague columns.

Picture, then, a 16-year-old boy heading south on the road out of Graz. In the Roman workshop of Johann Paul Schor, the young Styrian encounters an artistic hero – Gian Lorenzo Bernini – and learns the finer points of sculpture, metalworking, and architecture. After a sojourn in Naples, Fischer von Erlach returns to Austria at the age of 31.

Fame soon follows. He becomes the court architect of Joseph I, combining his knowledge of Italian Baroque with inspiration from styles he spots in England, Prussia, Venice, and the Netherlands. During a lull in his later career, he writes the Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture, which showcases works from antiquity. He includes not only Roman and Grecian works, but Islamic and Oriental buildings as well.

Finally, courtesy of the plague, Fischer von Erlach is given the chance to create his pièce de résistance – a church that mashes all of his international ideas into one temple of Austrian magnificence. There is a Greek temple entrance, Trajan’esque columns, Baroque pavilions, and a mighty crown. Like Hagia Sophia, St. Paul’s, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Pantheon, this is meant to be a dome without peer.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite the dome Fischer von Erlach envisioned. Since the great man died before the Karlskirche was completed, his son, Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, was left to finish the top. The younger Fischer von Erlach modified and shortened the original plans. So if the dome looks a bit stunted to you, you’re not crazy.

Carved by the sculptor Lorenzo Mattielli, the columns on either side of the Karlskirche are modeled on Trajan’s Column in Rome. They also echo the columns, Boaz and Jachim, that stood guard at Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The swirling relief depicts scenes from the life of St. Charles Borromeo, to whom the Karlskirche is dedicated.